Criminal Minds Word Prompts
by H. K. Rissing
Summary: various word prompts about the members of the BAU. Some will be funny, but some will be sad, and will change POV in each chapter.
1. Water

WATER

When he was younger, Spencer had never particularly liked swimming. The community pool was a big place that smelled of chlorine, chemicals and feet and was full of people much bigger than himself. He would wade in as far as his scrawny, gangly legs would take him, hopping like a bird down where the slope began and then back to where the floor was flat, watching the ripples in the creamy, chlorine-saturated water, the bubbles and lumps in the otherwise smooth fabric of the surface of the water rising around him. The other children, around his age, some lower, none even a half of his intelligence level, squirmed and giggled and splashed each other by the steps, never even wavering close to the edge, playing insipid games and sloshing water out of the sides. Spencer had never joined in. He'd never seen the point of being half drowned by his peers. So while the other children his age drove after sink toys, Spencer wondered what it would be like to paddle all the way out to the deep end, where the water was eleven feet deep. The tiles on the bottom there would not be faded, and you could duck under the water and listen to nothing but the ringing silence, just float there midway between surface and bottom, just float without being pushed or pinched by other children for taking up too much space. He tried swimming out to the deep end once and only once. Because once was precisely how many times it took to find out why none of the other children swam out there. His classmates, the high schoolers, would duck any child younger than sixteen years old under the water and hold them there until they almost passed out. Spencer stopped asking to be taken to the pool after that.

The ocean had been all right too, but he didn't get to see much of it in his childhood. His mother took him to the seashore only two times, and both times he had bee a little intimidated by the roiling mass of foam and salty gray water. He had stood on the edge for a moment, letting the edges of the waves break around his ankles, wrapping his pale arms around his torso, wondering what made the water sparkle in so many facets like that. A little minnow darted around in the pool, silvery and shining, and Spencer smiled- like him, they were the tiniest fishes in the sea, and didn't dare go out to where it was deep for fear the big fish would eat them. He had gone out up to his belly button the first time he had ever set foot in the ocean, and he had loved it. The way the warm water pressed and swirled around him, pushing him and nudging him to sway in different directions, but never, never shoving him or swelling over his head, they way they did to so many others. The second time, a summer later, he went out to his neck, feeling confident that his ocean would not have changed, it would still be gray and gentle and one thing that wasn't making him feel totally lost and in over his head. He was wrong. The waves were rough, the water briny, and the current so much stronger than himself. Silt and plants swirled around his ankles and shins, and then the frothy whitecaps broke over his head, pulling him down and turning him this way and that. He struggled to the shore and collapsed, waves lapping around his legs, compassionate and gentle now, sorry for its actions the way a dog that bit you comes back and licks your arm. The shell fragments and chunky particles of sand bit into his unprotected chest, but he couldn't care. His arms and legs felt rubbery, like the jellyfish he was laying next to, and as people passed, they snickered, some sympathetically, some maliciously, at the spindly boy who dared to brave the choleric sea, had been spit back out and was now sprawled inelegantly halfway in and halfway out like some gawky marine life.

After that, Spencer was a little afraid of water. Because it could be calm and happy, placid one moment, and then a roaring, screaming beast the next, and quite frankly, that was too unpredictable for him to want to deal with. He never submerged himself in water over his knees ever again, because he hated being in over his head, being unable to control something pertaining to himself, because that was a situation he found himself in far too often in his formative years. He still found his gaze drawn to pictures of the sea, and remembered the viscous heat of the sun and the sticky mire of sand. Maybe one day he would go back, and make his peace with the water.


	2. Hair Color

HAIR COLOR

Hair color had never really been something Aaron Hotchner noticed or cared about. After all, hair was hair, right? Then he met Hayley. He saw her from afar on a Tuesday afternoon. She and the rest of the drama club were standing out on a flat stretch of verdant grass in the middle of the school campus in a circle, laughing and playing some stupid get-to-know-you game. At first, he was more annoyed by them than anything, because his calculus class was in the other building, and the quickest way to get to it was to cross the lawn. And their laughter was grating, high and shrill. At first, he wouldn't have been able to pick her out of a lineup, but she eventually drew his gaze because as he was trying to cross the grass without being noticed by the guffawing, chummy group, and she screamed out, "MY NAME IS HAYLEY, AND I LOVE MY HAIR!" so of course, he had to look. And couldn't look away.

Her hair was a shade of gold like that of which he had never seen. Not blonde, gold. It was perfectly straight. Not a strand out of place, it fell just above her waist, a smooth, cascading waterfall. The sun brought out lovely highlights of an almost coppery shade. Aaron realized that he had remained frozen in place for the past twenty seconds, staring transfixedly at her hair. Thankfully, none of the other members of the club had noticed. He hurried off, was still late to class, and then flunked a quiz, because he couldn't seem to blink the sunspots out of his gaze, and the only thing he could think of was that he needed to join the drama club as soon as possible, to get to know the girl whose hair shone so brightly it eclipsed the sun. He submitted his application after school that same day, and went home with the image of her coruscating hair still wound around his mind.

Even after they were married, her hair never ceased to amaze him. It never lost its sheen, and the little flaxen strands still glittered brightly. It smelled wonderful too, like apples, white peach and vanilla, exactly like her perfume. There were so many different layers and colors in it- just like her. But then again, his family was comprised solely of dark or dull-haired people, so people with fair hair had never ceased to intrigue him.

He supposed that, by that logic, it should be JJ's hair that now drew his gaze, when she walked into slats of sunlight or worked with the blinds open in her office, if the day was nice. But hers was blonde, not the true gold, as . . . . . Hayleys' had been. Instead he found his gaze habitually drawn to Emily Prentiss, whose hair was nearly as dark as his. The way it didn't sparkle or frame her face like a halo, but shone glossily, inky and Stygian, unruffled, almost polished. He wondered what it would be like to touch it, briefly, fleetingly as they walked out to their respective cars. It would feel like silk, he decided. But he must take care never to let on that he wondered things like that. As her boss, it was close to forbidden for him to want to start a relationship with her, and would be frowned upon as best by most. But that didn't deter him from noticing the perfect sable color of her locks. Wait, perfect? Why would he have picked that adjective to describe her hair? Hadn't . . . . . Hayleys' been perfect? It occurred to Aaron that maybe they both could be. The thought made him smile.

**Yayy, Hotch and Prentiss! I love them as a couple. Please tell me what you think, and I love taking requests. **


	3. Late

The clock reads 5:23, and Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner is still asleep. He had been busy with lots of take-home work the night before, and stayed up late and he had forgotten to set his alarm.

When he opens his eyes, he knows something is wrong, because he does not feel the bone-crushing fatigue he expects to overwhelm him. Oh please no. He prays for the clock to show him anything but what he expects to see, but of course it doesn't. Time is the one UnSub he will never catch up to. It is 5:43. He has overslept by over half an hour. He is late, late, late.

He rushes to get dressed and goes through a condensed version of his usual morning routine. No time to have any form of breakfast, no time to check his reflection in the mirror. He has to race out the door of his apartment and zoom out of the parking garage as the sun stains the sky with pink, because he is late, late, late.

He tells himself that he is not late, just not as early as usual, but that does nothing to stifle the dread and anxiety that swirls though his torso, dries his throat and pinches at his organs. Agent Hotchner considers tardiness to be the eighth Deadly Sin, and dislikes having to tolerate it in others, but can't stand it in himself. When Agent Gideon was Unit Chief, nobody ever got there before him. He came earliest and left latest, and Hotch tried to hold himself to the same standards. But now his record will be forever smudged. He is certain JJ or someone will be there before him.

He pulls into his usual parking spot and hurries into the building. He nearly trots up the stairs, (the elevators are shamefully slow) crosses the silent bullpen, and is just beginning on his morning work when Garcia walks in. He feels considerably calmer as the rest of the team trickles in, and none of them ever know that he was late, late, late.

**This little fic just randomly popped into my brain because I hate being late, and tardiness seems like something Hotch would freak out about. He was having a small-scale panic attack there. XD. Let me know what you think!**


	4. Child

Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan had not particularly wanted children. Ever. At any point of his life. The closest he had come to imagining himself as a father was when he was in kindergarten, and his dream job was a bus driver, so he caringly loaded rocks to fill in a students in a wagon and practiced "driving" them around the school playground. And then JJ brought her son, tiny, little Henry the Baby in so her team could coo over him and tell her how perfect he was. Derek hadn't known what came over him, but he muscled his way forward and asked to hold him. His girl coworkers, who had been fluttering around fussing over Henry stopped and looked at him, eyes wide, mouths gulping. JJ had agreed, but he could still see the panic in Garcia's eyes. Which had irked him. He was almost known for his infamously absent gentleness, especially when pertaining to fragile, delicate or breakable things. But still. They didn't have to be so transparent about not trusting him with a small person.

He took the child and cradled it in the crook of his arms, ignoring Garcia's squawking that he was being smothered. His flannel blankets were warm and he was ridiculously soft. Henry's tiny, smushy face peeped up into his. He was so young and innocent and toothless. Derek felt a surge of emotion. He felt compelled to protect this child, to make the world a better place for him, to make sure he stayed- well, maybe not toothless, but young and innocent. Thanks to Reid, he knew what to call this. Philiprogenitiveness, the love of a parent for its offspring, even though Henry the Baby was not by any stretch of the imagination his child. Was this how all fathers felt when they held their children for the first time? Yes, this feeling was almost certainly why Hotch was able to be so strong, to execute his job so flawlessly- because he knew at the end of the day, he'd go home and hold his son, and know that everything he did was for that one small person, and that that one small person made everything worth it.

Then Henry the Baby started smiling, so full of glee that Morgan had to smile back. His girl team members said that it was just gas, but Morgan knew better. He decided to prove to them that he was not totally graceless, and seized the bottle of baby formula from Garcia and began feeding him. Henry gurgled joyously at him through an esophagus full of milk, and it was then that Morgan revised some of his previous thinking. Up until this point in his life, he had thought that getting married and having children was the ultimate form of slavery, but now he thought that getting married, if only for the joy of holding a child and calling it his own, wouldn't be quite so bad.

**It's short but it's sweet. I figured Morgan would value his independence more than starting a family, but now maybe he'll rethink that. **


	5. Whisper

It's moments like these when SSA Dave Rossi can't help but hear them. It's not like he doesn't try not to- after all, sometimes it's better to just leave certain things in the back of your mind- but there are days when he almost wants to listen. Let the whispers from his past drag all his memories up to the front of his mind. There are some good memories. His favorite is a day on a beach in the south of France, with his second wife. (How callous it sounds to say, "my second wife". How much worse to say, "my third?") The sun was bright and the water warm, sky blue and sand yellow, and they were so very, very much in love. That was his longest marriage and the one he felt had the greatest chance of lasting.

But for every good memory the skeletons in his closet can remind him of, they can remind him of five bad ones.

And not just memories of what he's had to witness on the job. Though those horrors are extensive, and still wake him up at night, there are other, deeper memories he tries to forget. Deeper fissures, darker ravines that spit blue sparks of pain when he probes them. Like holding his second wife, Adelaide's' hand, smiling down into her bald, post-chemo face, wondering how fast the cells were growing on her bones, eating through her lungs, debilitating her brain. Like holding his fragile child's cooling corpse in his hands, still at the hospital. His little son hadn't even lived for an hour. After that day, Carleen, his first wife, and his relationship deteriorated and ended in divorce. Like walking into his apartment after work to find his third wife, Tamson, with another man. Like being told four times by publishers that no one would ever publish his book. Every time he tries to remember only the good, from the back of his mind, blowing up like the foul stench of garbage, the bad memories evade.

Dave Rossi has not had what you could call an easy life.

The insidious, worming whispers from everything he's left behind, from all the worst days of his life always lurk, omnipresent and dark swirling gray under the calm façade of everyone's unflappable, favorite uncle. There are days when he's give anything and everything to forget it all, to not hear the whispers anymore. He knows he won't, though, he knows he can't.

It is, however, much easier to shut the closet doors more firmly on the skeletons when it's Jennifer Jareau he's talking to. When it's her little son Henry he's privileged enough to get to rock to sleep. When it's her hair he gets to ruffle, despite her protests, her forehead he gets to kiss. She makes the whispers fade to the most distant murmur, and chases away the gray away with her smile. He wouldn't mind being whispered to as long as it was about her.


End file.
